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About DOCOMOTechnologiesIntellectual Property
Expanding the Scope
DOCOMO actively researches and develops W-CDMA, LTE, LTE-Advanced and FRA (Future Radio Access) technologies to upgrade its networks and launch new services, with the ultimate goal of enhancing mobile experiences for customers.
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The company is accelerating efforts to secure patents, having added about 820 patents in Japan and about 1,400 patents in other countries between April 2011 and March 2012. Going forward, DOCOMO aims to strengthen its global competitiveness by steadily expanding the scope of its intellectual property. |
Noteworthy Achievements and Contributions to Technical Standards
Among many noteworthy achievements in the field of intellectual property, DOCOMO patented the Signal Transmission Method, Transmitter and Receiver in Mobile Communication System (Japanese Patent No. 3214860) for W-CDMA mobile communications in July 2001. The technology shortens the time required from turning on a handset to receiving signals from base stations, entering standby mode and detecting base stations for handover.
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The invention, which earned DOCOMO the prime minister's National Invention Award in 2010, also has been patented in the United States, European countries, China and Korea, and was adopted by the ITU as an international standard. |
DOCOMO has contributed to the establishment of numerous technical standards for wireless technologies, such as W-CDMA and LTE, and media coding technologies such as H.264 and AAC. Also, many technologies developed by DOCOMO have been incorporated in global standards. The company owns a large number of essential patents for various standards, many of which it licenses through patent pools.
Independent analysis has placed DOCOMO in fourth place in terms of its global share of essential patents for LTE (Ref. Evaluation of LTE essential patents declared to ETSI Version 2 by Cyber Creative Institute Co. Ltd., October 12, 2012).
In total, DOCOMO held some 4,500 patents in Japan and 9,000 patents overseas as of December 2012, reflecting its global strength in intellectual property. DOCOMO's international patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty ranked first among telecom operators and 42nd among all organizations worldwide, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (Ref. International Patent Fillings Set New Record in 2011, March 5, 2012).
